SONOMA, Calif. -- RockStar Panther driver Tomas Enge claimed another
career-best finish Sunday in the Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix, after
finishing fifth in the 80-lap event. Enge, who topped his previous
career-best of sixth set last week at Pikes Peak, also led a total of 13
laps in the race. Pennzoil Panther driver Tomas Scheckter encountered
several problems during his run today, and was forced to exit the race
early with a 16th-place finish.

Enge qualified fourth for today's event and jumped to third within
the first few laps of the race. Then, following his first pit stop, the
IndyCar Series rookie climbed into the lead on Lap 33 and slowly built a
six-second advantage. Tomas managed to fight off eventual winner Tony
Kanaan for 13 laps, even after spinning out on Lap 38. He pitted on Lap
47 and was continuing his climb until another caution period. The
RockStar team elected to take a fuel-only stop on the 53rd lap of the
event to make sure Enge could make it to the finish.

Scheckter experienced a failure in the sensor of his gear-shift lever,
forcing him to shift manually on the difficult 12-turn circuit. Tomas
still overcame the problem, and ran as high as sixth when the Pennzoil
team elected not to pit during the first yellow-flag period. Later in the
race Scheckter collided slightly with another car, which caused damage to
his suspension. The Panther crew attempted to fix the problem, but
Scheckter was unable to continue.

This is the second-consecutive weekend where Enge has brought home his
career-best finish. After having an early-season high of seventh at
Richmond, the 28-year-old finished sixth at Pikes Peak a week ago.
Today's finish marks his first Top Five while driving in the
IndyCar Series. The series rookie has also led laps in both non-oval
events of the season.

With his finish, Enge has climbed within 12 points of second place in the
IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year standings.

The IndyCar Series will be off next weekend before traveling to
Chicagoland Speedway for the Chicagoland Indy 300 on Sept. 11 -- the
race will also be held on Enge's 29th birthday.

Tomas Enge:

"The RockStar car was just great today and I must thank all my guys
and especially my engineer Andy Borme. Compared to where we were when we
started the weekend, this is an awesome finish for our Panther team. I
know we were just fifth, but this is still a great result. I had two
small touches and one spin, and with the different fuel strategy we had
to make one extra stop for fuel. (On the spin) I just wanted as big a gap
as possible from (second-place) Tony Kanaan, and I only lost a few
seconds and not even a position. After the spin we had a bit of a
vibration, but I was still trying to push as much as possible. We will
keep moving forward and I still believe that we can win a race this
season."

Tomas Scheckter:

"For sure it was a long day for the Pennzoil Panther crew. Right from
the start, we started the race with a problem. A sensor on the
gear-shift lever failed. I had to lift off the throttle every time I
wanted to change gears which cost us a massive amount of time on the
track. We tried a different fuel strategy to try to compensate for our
lack of overall speed, but unfortunately, we got into an incident with
someone and bent the suspension a bit. We tried to fix it initially, but
after trying to run again, we decided to pack it in. It was a tough way
to end a long weekend, but we'll regroup and come back strong at
Chicagoland."